Medulla: A 2D sidescrolling platformer game that teaches basic brain structure and function

Creator

Joey R. Fanfarelli, University of Central FloridaFollow
Stephanie Vie, University of Central Florida

Keywords

game, games, educational, educational game, learning, learning game, brain, psychology, psychology game, serious game, serious games, empirical, students

Abstract

This article explores the design and instructional effectiveness of Medulla, an educational game meant to teach brain structure and function to undergraduate psychology students. Developed in the retro-style platformer genre, Medulla uses two-dimensional gameplay with pixel-based graphics to engage students in learning content related to the brain, information which is often pre-requisite to more rigorous psychological study. A pretest posttest design was used in an experiment assessing Medulla’s ability to teach psychology content. Results indicated content knowledge was significantly higher on the posttest than the pretest, with a large effect size. Medulla appears to be an effective learning tool. These results have important implications in the design of educational psychology games and for educational game designers and artists exploring the possibility of using a two-dimensional retro-style structure.

Publication Date

9-2015

Document Type

Paper

Language

English

Source Title

Well Played a journal on video games, value and meaning

Volume

4

Issue

2

Copyright Status

Author retained

Publication Version

Publisher's version

Rights

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

College

College of Arts and Humanities

First Page

7

Last Page

29

Department

Digital Media

ISSN

2164-3458

STARS Citation

Fanfarelli, Joey R. and Vie, Stephanie, "Medulla: A 2D sidescrolling platformer game that teaches basic brain structure and function" (2015). Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 109.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/ucfscholar/109